Robins in the Grapes, a harrowing story

So far we've had four robin nests on the Scordato homestead this year and two of the four have made it. The following is an account of the robin's nest in the grapes. I posted the empty nest at an earlier post. Here is the progress of this nest, as we had to help them out a bit. So, on June 13th the chicks started to hatch out and I managed to catch this rare moment when the last egg still had to hatch. Usually when I check nests, each day it's like: four eggs four eggs four eggs four chicks But I got this shot, fuzzy as it is:

Here is another shot with all four chicks, can you tell anything different from the previous pictures?

It may be hard to tell from the pictures, because the camera kept focusing on the surrounding grape foliage, but once the babies hatched out of the eggs, their weight tilted the nest at about a 45 degree angle. While this Momma robin chose a nest site that would be covered by the grape leaves, she was still not an engineering genius. On Saturday and Sunday of father's day weekend, I kept checking on the nest a few times a day. At one point, three of the four chicks were on the ground, but there was one, I swear I put him back in the nest 6 times. I didn't think he was going to make it he got so behind in feathers and size. I nicknamed him "runty." On father's day morning Runty was out of the nest again. So when we got back from Dad's father's day breakfast, he made a shelf out of scrap from the chicken tractor extension he has been building, and we drilled the shelf underneath the nest to make it horizontal again. Sure enough when we took the shelf over to the grapes, there was runty, and a sibling back on the ground. We put the nest on the grape post and while the platform doesn't actually touch the nest, it does support the vines underneath and the nest was stabilized. But would Runty make it? Yes, here is a picture. As you can see Runty in the front, has less feathers, but is holding his own.

And here is Momma robin, dutifully collecting worms to feed them all.

By the time this blog is posted, the fledgelings will have left the nest, all four of them! I'm not sure if the shelf will stay as Andrew has to prune this row and there will be less cover for them. Momma robin may have to build a new crib is she want's one more batch...Robins can squeeze in three clutches between April and August.

You can see the shelf in this picture here.

And, here is their close up. Let's wish them well. I saw a statistic that says only 1 in 100 robin fledglings survive to their second spring. Who knows, maybe it will be Runty, who is in the nest, just not pictured, I swear.

I am planning a huge post soon entirely devoted to the growing vineyard in our back forty. I'll have pictures of the grapes when the first bud out, and some more information about what Andrew is growing.